


Entry 1: Baizane Sadertum

by Quantum_Overload



Series: Overload Archives [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Constructive Criticism Welcome, How Do I Tag, I'm Bad At Tagging
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28520496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quantum_Overload/pseuds/Quantum_Overload
Summary: When I first told this story it was around a fire, more comfortable than I'd ever been. Now I have to dictate it for the record. ¿Por qué? So a nobody author can write it all down?[¡Eh! What was that for?]Fine, my partner is telling me to put up and get on with it.
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character
Series: Overload Archives [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089068





	1. Audio Log 1: In the Heart of the Hearth (Renegade)

When I first told this story it was around a fire, more comfortable than I'd ever been. Now I have to dictate it for the record. ¿Por qué? So a nobody author can write it all down?  


[¡Eh! What was that for?]  


Fine, my partner is telling me to put up and get on with it.

For me, it all started in a place we now call the Baizane Sadertum. It was bleak and desolate. Devoid of flourishing life, blanketed by a dense layer of thunder clouds and accented by a grim death-like ambience. The Baizane Sadertum was a prison. An entire plane of existence to isolate and dispose of a single inmate, and me too I guess.  


I had been... Stranded. No. I had been abandoned there for a while. I lay low, for the most part, doing my best to avoid detection. It wasn't enough. Yeah, turns staying out of sight in a desert wasteland is pretty difficult when your hunter sends unkillable, tireless beasts created from her hate, malice and rage after you.  


I'd generally made it out of every skirmish with the beasts in pretty good shape. There were a few wounds here and there but nothing I didn't know how to handle. Then Baize came after me herself.


	2. Audio Log 2: The End of the Hunt (Renegade)

The day (or, the closest approximation to it)started out rough. Beginning with a fitful hour of sleep I was already running on fumes as my feet beat the sand and howls echoed behind a dune to my left. My head snapped back as I instinctively surveyed the situation. The inky figure of a wolf was sliding down the slope as a flash of white dipped behind the grey sand from above the clouds. I jolted forward with sloppy footsteps. It was futile, but I managed to stay out of reach for half a klick before the sprite fly-tackled me.  


Something glass shattered across my back, puncturing my wings as we collided. The force tipped me off balance as I spun 'round and landed flat on my back with my wings splayed out beneath me. My shoulder blades stung with pins and needles making my wings feel numb as blood pooled around the large shards that had embedded themselves in the muscles beneath my feathers. To top it all off a bass buzz began to reverberate in the back of my head making me drowsy.  


I forced my eyes to flutter open and found the pristine snowy beast, Baize, leering at me as her sharp digits dug into my arm. I winced, trembling involuntarily as warm blood pooled around her claws. Despite my stature dwarfing hers, Baize had effectively pinned me, my wings throbbing under our combined bodyweight.  


“Looks like I've finally caught you,” Baize snarled lowly. The jet-black wolf padded up beside her, throat rumbling aggressively as saliva dripped slowly from its clenched fangs.  


What I said next I blame on my possible concussion, and the hazy waves filtering through my head; definitely wasn't of my own volition whatsoever.  


“Yo, la Pocita, you're lookin' mono,” I drawled, accent heavy and eyes hazy.  


[Cállate! Stop sniggering, I wasn't thinking straight.]  


Baize screeched viciously at the disrespect as she pulled back her claws. She leaned back, thrusting a hand in between a layer of sticky, mangled feathers and wrapped it around a rather large shard of glass so she wouldn’t cut herself. She twisted her wrist sharply and yanked the fragment out, crimson blood dripping over the grey sand and staining my white shirt as the sprite positioned the makeshift weapon above me. Baize pulled her other hand off my arm and rested her weight onto the corresponding wing, burying her digits in fluffy down and strong stems in a way that made my nerves tingle. Her face pulled into a wide, animalistic snarl, mirroring that of the rabid wolf at her command. My mouth twitched. Likely to make some delusional comment about Baize.  


Luckily for me, my tongue was lead in my mouth, lolling around languidly so I couldn't make that death sentence of a comment. Baize drove the glass shard-turned-dagger into my shoulder as she yanked out the handful of feathers in her other hand at the same time. My hips arched upwards in a vain attempt to get my attacker off of me. Baize simply adjusted her free hand to brace herself against the sand in response. In a clearer state of mind, I would have hooked her weight-bearing arm to try to roll her off of me, but the haze swimming behind my eyes saw it more fitting to reorient their attention to my plucked, red feathers dancing away.  


Lone drops of vibrant colour fluttered across a desert of monochrome sand and sky. Like dollops of paint on a barren canvas by the uncertain hand of a budding artist. Or like the waves of blood spilt on the vast chaos of a battlefield. I'm certain now from the reports that my partner would file later that Baize had ripped more feathers from both of my wings and had put at least two more stab wounds into me, but at the moment my brain was too dissociated to register that pain. My focus returned to Baize when her hand clutched my chin and yanked my head to face her. Baize held the glass fragment in hand and raised it above my face. She was smiling. The image sent shivers up my spine, an ominous energy pulsing and radiating off the air. Fear settled onto my tongue, compelling me to spit out some sharp words. My eyes narrowed and my mouth began to part, but whatever I was going to say morphed into a churning scream. Baize had sunk the bloodied glass fragment into my right eye, gripping it with both hands and leaning forward to drive it in as deep as she could manage.  


In reality, the laceration that blinded me wasn't all that deep. The shard was probably a lot smaller than I'm remembering it too, but it was one of the largest shards found in my wings and back and the wound did irreparable damage to my eye.  


[You can tell them that yourself when you get on the mic in a few. I'm almost done.]  


I don't know why it happened, but the next thing I knew I had blacked out. A single stab wound, even to my eye, shouldn't have done that to me. Either way, I came to hours later with a stranger watching over me. Thus, I am entirely unqualified to continue.


	3. Audio Log 3: Shifting Tides (Siana)

Right, the name's Siana and I'm the one who came up with this whole crazy operation. I suppose whoever's listening already knows my name because we'll label the audio logs with the narrator for each section, though in hindsight it'll spoil part of the story. 

Of course, this whole setup spoils the story. It's like reverse dramatic irony, or I suppose literary omniscience is more accurate, but in this case, the narrators are the characters but from after the event the story is about, so, I'm not entirely sure if it applies... Foreshadowing, maybe? 

Oh, right! We managed to change our setup so that you can hear the people in the control booth when they talk if they want to add to the recording. East just had to rewire a few things. Now, where to begin? Ah, yes. 

  


Stepping into the grey sand for the first time, it felt like my feet were sinking into velvet. The fine grain shifting like running water, enveloping me. A glance at my new environment was all it took to know something was wrong with this world. I took a knee for a closer look, brushing my hand lightly over the sand to check its consistency. What put me off about the sparse desert was the texture of the sand. The entire area was smooth, pattern-less. The sand in a desert is usually found in a semi-permanent repeated pattern caused by the wind. This pattern resembles waves, making the dunes look like a dry ocean, but the Baizane Sadertum didn't have that. It made the desert look deader than they normally are. 

[¿Qué importante?] 

Hopping through different realities and dimensions and timelines and whatnot I'd been to some really strange places and was ready for anything at that point. Every detail I observed big or small contributed to my understanding of how the Sadertum operated and prepare for it. 

[Great help that was.] 

After that brief survey, my eyes rested on a site metres ahead of me. A petite white girl with insect-like wings was mounted on the stomach of a black-haired man at least twice her size with large red wings. Her hands were raised above her head, grasped around a glinting object while a pitch-black wolf trotted a perimeter around her dutifully. My body kicked itself into high gear and I started forward with a jolt, tossing up a sand cloud behind me. As I raced forward I charged energy into my right hand, forming a half-dozen glowing crystals the size of my fingers. I lifted my arm and pulled back, ready to launch the attack. The wolf perked up at my approach and bounded towards me, howling. When it was within range the beast jumped at me extending its claws. As the wolf reached the vertex of its parabola it shifted into a giant yellow jacket with a stinger the length of an average human torso. The stinger glinted dangerously, the only white highlight in a mass of foggy darkness. The shadow creature reared back its abdomen when we were five strides apart. Behind the insect, Baize had driven the glass fragment from her broken weapon into her captive's eye. 

The shadow beast and I were two strides apart when the giant monstrosity decided to thrust its stinger, noticing its abdomen twitch I threw my crystals at it in a downward swipe. The momentum of my swing allowed me to tuck into a forward roll, the yellow jacket's stinger whiffing over the tips of my magenta hair and veering to my left before crashing to the ground, still twitching. I flexed my left hand, calling the crystals to reuse them. The crystals vibrated in response, forcing their way through the insect. As they reached the other end of the body I heard the frantic buzz of beating wings and the low thumping of a heavily shifting body as the giant beast found its second wind. I hastily fused the crystals into a simple javelin as they slipped out of the yellow jacket's abdomen and, with a twitch of my fingertips, sent it flying into the yellow jacket's side, pinning it to the ground. I turned my head back briefly to check my work before running off to close the distance between me and Baize. 

Baize was pressed flush against her captive, glowing hands hovering over the tail end of the glass fragment. The glow made the air around her hands ripple as if an immense heat was radiating from them; that did appear to be the case as the tip of the glass fragment began to glow orange. As it was heated into its molten form the glass created a protective cast around the eyeball that Baize had damaged. This would later prevent any repairs of the eye short of tearing it out and putting in a prosthetic one but even that would prove difficult with how the molten glass had been fused to his muscle. 

[That was Baize? I thought you did that to protect the wound from infection 'cause you didn't have the right materials at the time.] 

[Even if they aren't for medical purposes I always have a needle and thread on me. How else do you think I stitched up your shoulder wounds!] 

I let out a cry, alerting Baize to my approach. She sat up and turned to face me, startled, as if she wasn't expecting me to deal with her minion so quickly (which I found pretty odd considering that it was easy to figure out how to neutralise the beast even without knowing how to kill it). With Baize now in a position for it to work, I leapt into the air and sent a flying kick to her face. The sprite was sent sprawling backwards into the loose sands, barely able to soften her landing with a gust from her wings. Baize pushed up onto her haunches, sharp predatory glare focused on me as sand rolled off her like water off a duck's back and a low growl reverberated from her throat. I shifted into the Ginga, arms swinging in front of my face defensively as I stepped rhythmically from side to side. Baize's growling faltered sharply, expression shifting from narrowed rage to suspicious confusion. She tilted her head looking past me instead of at me and her eyes blew wide open. Her aggression returned once again but this time accompanied by a hint of wariness. My eyebrows shot up at the realisation, body softening a fraction, thinking I had read the air wrong. Baize extended a leg, pushing her body away from me. Her muscles tensed, wings poised and vigilant. I felt my hands clench in anticipation, but instead, Baize shifted her centre of gravity behind her leg and shot into the air away from me. Then, she twisted around before taking off over sand dunes in the opposite direction. 

I slipped my back foot forward and lowered my arms, pulling out of my combat stance. I hesitated for two clicks... fine, two ticks. 

[For reference, a klick is a military term for a kilometre. It's common slang where Siana grew up.] 

[But Renegade, they're spelt differently. K for kilo, c like the sound effect.] 

[Ok then Mr Grammar Nazi, how do we make the distinction between them through audio!] 

[Pronounce it k-lick.] 

Shaking myself out of my stupor I turned to the injured man on the ground behind me!... They're still going at it so I'm going to have to end this here for a bit to break them up.


End file.
